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Wednesday, March 13, 2013

When the State Speaks, What Should It Say?

How should a liberal democracy respond to hate groups and others
that oppose the ideal of free and equal citizenship? The democratic
state faces the hard choice of either protecting the rights of hate
groups and allowing their views to spread, or banning their views
and violating citizens' rights to freedoms of expression,
association, and religion. Avoiding the familiar yet problematic
responses to these issues, political theorist Corey Brettschneider
of Brown University proposes a new approach called value democracy.
The theory of value democracy argues that while the state should
protect the right to express illiberal beliefs, the state should
also engage in democratic persuasion when it speaks through its
various expressive capacities: publicly criticizing, and giving
reasons to reject, hate-based or other discriminatory viewpoints.
Distinguishing between two kinds of state action—expressive and
coercive—Brettschneider contends that public criticism of
viewpoints advocating discrimination based on race, gender, or
sexual orientation should be pursued through the state's expressive
capacities as speaker, educator, and spender. When the state uses
its expressive capacities to promote the values of free and equal
citizenship, it engages in democratic persuasion. By using
democratic persuasion, the state can both respect rights and
counter hateful or discriminatory viewpoints. Brettschneider
extends this analysis from freedom of expression to the freedoms of
religion and association, and he shows that value democracy can
uphold the protection of these freedoms while promoting equality
for all citizens.